The gaming industry depends upon player participation. Players are generally “hopeful” players who either think they are lucky or at least think they can get lucky—for a relatively small investment to play a game, they can get a disproportionately large return. To create this feeling of luck, a gaming apparatus relies upon an internal or external random element generator to generate one or more random elements such as random numbers. The gaming apparatus determines a game outcome based, at least in part, on the one or more random elements.
A significant technical challenge is to improve the operation of gaming apparatus and games played thereon, including the manner in which they leverage the underlying random element generator, by making them yield a negative return on investment in the long run (via a high quantity and/or frequency of player/apparatus interactions) and yet random and volatile enough to make players feel they can get lucky and win in the short run. Striking the right balance between yield versus randomness and volatility to create a feeling of luck involves addressing many technical problems, some of which can be at odds with one another. This luck factor is what appeals to core players and encourages prolonged and frequent player participation. The difficulty of maintaining of this balance is compounded when elements of player skill are introduced to the games played on the gaming apparatus.
Regulations in many jurisdictions in which wagering games are deployed in gaming establishments such as casinos and the like require long-term machine conformance to the designed return to player (RTP or payback percentage) and games incorporating skill are no exception. For example, regulations may require skill games to track the RTP over a set number of game plays and note if the RTP falls within a certain percentage (e.g., 5 percent) of the desired or anticipated RTP. If not, it is required that such deviations be noted. If more than a certain number of trials fall outside of the desired RTP range, the gaming machine may be forced into an out-of-service or “tilt” condition. Until corrected by the machine's operator, such tilts lead to machine downtime, during which the machine cannot be played. This deprives players of entertainment and the operator of the opportunity to acquire earnings from the machine.
As the industry matures, the creativity and ingenuity required to improve such operation of gaming apparatus and games grows accordingly.